Contemporary Canadian Glass

By Larissa Blokhuis

If I hadn’t been born in a city with a glass school, I would definitely still be an artist, but I wouldn’t be a glassblower.  Like most people, before I tried glassblowing, I didn’t realise it was something you could do as an art form.  In grade school it seems like the basic experiences you can have consist of many 2D techniques, and only ceramics for 3D.  (I’ll be happy if I’m wrong about that for your former school.)  Ceramics have never really appealed to me and I couldn’t have known what else was available until it was offered.  Because glass is offered at the Alberta College of Art and Design, and because I was lucky enough to be born in Calgary, I am a glassblower.  After art school, when I moved from Calgary to Vancouver, I lost the potential for a support system of former teachers and my graduating class.  My support system when I arrived consisted of Jill Allan.  She’s a good support system, but she’s only one woman. 

One-Woman Support System: Jill Allan getting ready to blow glass at Rogue Wave Glassworks, Photo credit: Larissa Blokhuis

Public interest

People are interested in glassblowing in Vancouver.  Working in New-Small and Sterling, a gallery specializing in Canadian glass on Granville Island, I have been approached countless times by people who want to know more about how and where they can study glass.  Then I see the disappointment as they learn that there is no glassblowing school in Vancouver.  They can’t afford to or don’t want to uproot their whole lives to go to Calgary for a BFA or Oakville for an Advanced Diploma.  With all the post-secondary schools in the lower mainland, many people expect to be able to learn to blow glass without re-locating.

Even for those looking only for an expensive hobby, there are few options.  New-Small and Sterling offers a two-day weekend course, the only course offered in Vancouver that I am aware of.  (If you are in BC and offer a course, let me know!)  If somebody wants more than two days, they must leave Vancouver for a weeklong summer course at Red Deer College or a three-week intensive at Pilchuck.  Andrighetti Glass offers only short flameworking courses, beginner to intermediate.  The last option is to find a glassblower willing to do private lessons.  There are a few glassblowers who offer such opportunities, but they are often in the Greater Vancouver area rather than Vancouver proper, and they are not centrally organised and can be difficult to find.  Two such teachers are Malcolm Macfadyen and Jeff Burnette.  As for cold construction and kiln-forming techniques, I have never heard any discussion of where one might learn fusing or casting or any other technique not dependant on a hotshop. 

It’s all about who you know   

That phrase means more and more to me the longer I stay in Vancouver.  With its well-established art scene and hordes of artists moving here to make it big every year, Vancouver doesn’t need to advertise its opportunities to attract people.  And it often doesn’t.  Many opportunities in Vancouver are only available if you already know the people you’re trying to meet and impress.  Without a school to serve as a central point for glass artists to perform and attend demonstrations and lectures, I find many of us do not network or meet face-to-face in groups frequently enough for my liking.  With a school present, we could all get to know each other a little better and help each other find opportunities.  With enough glass artists working side-by-side to require organisation, we would have an easier time creating our own opportunities. 

If I had not got a job at New-Small and Sterling, I would not have known where exactly to look to meet other glass artists in BC.  The BC Glass Art Association provides some opportunities and involves local artists, but I often feel that we are quite spread out and sometimes share no history.  If we were all sharing information at a school, we would build a common base of knowledge and history.  As well, the BCGAA is run by volunteers, which means that members must focus on other jobs for income first and BCGAA involvement second or third.  I have thoroughly enjoyed the BCGAA get-togethers, and I will be excited to see and be involved with more of them.  A glass school in Vancouver would be a great place for established BCGAA members to meet potential new members. 

The fact is that glass artists primarily come together wherever there is equipment available.  Starfish was the type of location that brought glass artists together to create a community.  There is a community around New-Small and Sterling, but it could be bigger.  Vancouver needs a public hotshop/coldshop to bring us together, but the cost of utilities and the price to rent land in Vancouver is too high.  If the hotshop were incorporated into a school the cost could be covered.

What is it you’re making?

With a place to work and meet, artists would have better access to the constructive criticisms of others, something I miss from school.  There is no regular forum for glass artists to get interested in what others are doing and to discuss ideas.  Critiques from friends are helpful, but they can lack the objectivity of a colleague from your studio or school.  In a school environment, it is not presumptuous to question somebody about very specific technical details and concepts regarding what they’re making.  With many glass artists asking questions and sharing information, each individual would have more opportunity to improve the quality of their work and try new techniques.  As well, if a glass school were attracting visiting artists, there could always be new influences available.  It is always beneficial to watch others work, to see what is successful and to provoke thought about why things are done one way or another.

Jim Norton Demo: One of Jim’s demos at ACAD circa 2006, Photo Credit: Larissa Blokhuis

If I lived in a city with a glass school, I would probably try to teach/work there.  There is a chance to grow my career as an artist in Vancouver, but I also need to think about secure housing (which means secure income) and health benefits in the future.  I also have to think about improving my techniques and practises, and that includes taking more courses.  I will have no option but to leave Vancouver and its thriving art scene, internationally known galleries, and tourist dollars to do so.

Every year I meet enough Vancouverites who want to try glass that they could easily fill two semesters’ worth of continuing education courses.  As in every city, there are young artists thinking about what direction they want to take.  If glass were an option in one of the many art programs available here, some of them would be glass artists too.  Vancouver has attracted some amazing glass artists, and it’s time for the city to start producing them as well.

By Sally McCubbin

Here Today Gone Tomorrow, 2010 by artist Sally McCubbin installed at Earlscourt and St. Clair Ave., Toronto –for more on the project visit www.sallymccubbin.com

In 2008, the City of Toronto in partnership with the Toronto Transit Commission invited artists to apply for the St. Clair Avenue West Transit Improvements Public Art Program. The initiative was to provide visual art for the then almost-completed light rail transit line along St. Clair Avenue West in Toronto. The streetcar stops to be adorned with art panels would extend from Yonge St. to Keele St., making up a 6.2 km stretch of public art.

When I was approached about applying for the project, I was a resident in the glass studio at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre and my career was focused on that. The idea of making large public works wasn’t on the radar, but the conditions seemed right:

• I grapple with making art that is affordable and available to so few.
• I am a wholehearted supporter of the transit initiatives in my city.
• My work surrounds social commentary and I liked that it could live in the context it reflects.

Although I didn’t know how I would produce glasswork large enough (or safe enough) to meet the 3 foot by 40 foot criteria, I applied.

* * *

Corridor, 2010 by artists Jane and Kathryn Irwin installed at Glenholme and St. Clair Ave., Toronto

On a blustery winter day, about a half an hour late for the meeting, I burst into a North Toronto conference room snowy and out of breath … I had had car trouble. I was there for the project briefing, to understand better the scope of the project so that I could propose a design to be considered for inclusion into the transit line installation. This was stage two. All those that attended were very calm and collected. Many artists had brought an associate and the slideshow had already begun. About a minute after my inelegant arrival my cell phone rang, shredding the silence again. I spent the rest of the meeting acting invisible.

This memory, from over two years ago, is so vivid to me because of the inferiority I felt. To say I was nervous would be putting it mildly. Regardless of who was sitting around that table, arts-cultural-folklore had taught me that they were advanced in their artistic practices, had more experience and therefore more artistic merit and vocabulary than I.

Was I too unqualified to be there? If not, why did I feel that way?

Flatspace, 2010 by artist Sara Graham installed at Winona and St. Clair Ave., Toronto

I’ll skip to the end of the story, both to save you from the details of the next couple years and also to make my point. As it turned out, I was qualified to be there. I was awarded one commission on my own and a second commission for a collaborative design with Aaron Oussoren. We have since completed the projects, the pieces are installed along St. Clair Avenue and all twenty-five works by the city’s photographers, multi-media artists, metal and glass artists, painters and sculptors look great.

My question remains, why was I so intimidated? Why does the realm of public art reek of hierarchical greatness?

Meeting, 2010 by artist Panya Clark Espinal installed at Dunvegan and St. Clair Ave., Toronto

The GAAC conference in Montreal this past May was filled with artist lecturers who make their careers as public installation artists or have received periodic public commissions. Among their assortment of project types, scales, locations and varying degrees of success, I noticed some thematic congruencies from lecture to lecture:

• All the presenters are established artists and, having had long careers of making their work by way of personal mandate, each showed distaste for the commissioning criteria and selection process.
• As a common rule, it was agreed by most that an aspiring public artist must have previous large-scale/public experience to be selected for a subsequent project, which is a discouraging double-edged sword.
• And, finally, I noticed signs of disinterest for second, third or mid-career projects that may have been less stimulating for the artist. This apathy is sometimes evident in the work’s overall success.

It seems to me, in the greater context of public art, that in many cases mature artists are simply ‘graduating’ into the realm of large public art projects.  Are juries looking for visual artists with a long history and a reputation, or are they looking for qualities that fit the criteria presented for the project? Probably a combination of the three, but does that make sense? Could Canada’s art in public spaces be more engaging and treasured if new and unusual talent was a criteria? Where does the artistic integrity end and the addiction to a large, reliable, paycheque begin?

Scenic Route, 2010 by artist Carlo Cesta installed at Avenue and St. Clair Ave., Toronto

I ask these questions in the spirit of discourse.

In my own story, concerning my selection I’ve considered the following possibilities. Perhaps the TTC and the city did have the initiative to hire new and emerging talent, as I was not the only “newcomer” among the artists commissioned. Perhaps it was difficult to find glass artists who could make work to fit the safety and structural limitations of their project. Or, perhaps it was simply the quality of my work.

One Among Many, 2010 by artists Sally McCubbin and Aaron Oussoren installed at Arlington and St. Clair Ave., Toronto –for more on the project visit www.sallymccubbin.com

I poured my heart (and brain) into the design and I have to believe that that is why they selected my proposal. So for anyone interested in making art for a public forum, if you feel your work suits such an audience and surroundings you don’t need a foot in the door, previous experience, or a reputation … you need to be passionate about the work you dream up and the reasons you need to make it.  As always.

Sally McCubbin is Managing Editor of Contemporary Canadian Glass and  is also an instructor at Sheridan College. She recently opened a studio of 12 artists in Toronto, called Elevator Art Lab. Sally is passionate about thoughtful design and created a company entitled Timid Glass Toronto with partner Aaron Oussoren that reflects this enthusiasm as well as their shared interest in environmentalism and conservationism.

par Hélène Brown, Crédit photo Jean-Pierre Lacroix

Chat des artistes

La culture est essentielle à la vie des peuples : elle les soude, les inscrit dans l’histoire, et leur permet de se dépasser, d’innover, de créer de la beauté. Par là même, elle doit être considérée comme un moteur important de la dynamique sociale et économique. Son impact sur la richesse collective est complexe, mais certain.

Dans plusieurs grandes villes du monde, nous observons un phénomène d’exode des créateurs à l’extérieur des quartiers centraux dû à la spéculation immobilière. Les artistes, ne trouvant plus d’espace abordable et adéquat pour y travailler, migrent en périphérie. Et, lorsque les créatifs quittent, nous le savons, c’est toute la vitalité d’un quartier qui quitte avec eux. De plus, dans une économie basée sur le savoir et la connaissance, la force créative représente la matière première de l’innovation. Il s’avère donc peut-être plus que jamais essentiel de contrer ce phénomène, car de là dépend notre place dans le monde, notre prospérité et notre vitalité.

Montréal n’échappe pas à ce phénomène. Bien que la ville se positionne comme une métropole culturelle, elle doit s’engager, en concertation avec les acteurs du milieu culturel, à développer des infrastructures qui vont perdurer dans le temps et soutenir la création. Toronto a vécu ce phénomène bien avant Montréal au début des années soixante-dix et elle a réagi en créant l’organisme à but non lucratif Artscape voué, entre autres, au développement d’espaces abordables pour les artistes.

En 2007, pour trouver une solution durable aux problèmes d’une communauté d’artistes du quartier menacée de perdre son lieu de travail, la Corporation de développement économique et communautaire Centre-Sud /Plateau Mont-Royal (CDEC). en partenariat avec Culture Montréal, fondent les Ateliers Créatifs, une organisation à but non lucratif, dont la mission est de développer et pérenniser des lieux de créations. S’inspirant de Toronto Artscape,  les organismes fondateurs prennent  le pari d’un développement culturel, social et économique harmonieux et inaugurent en décembre 2008, le premier projet pilote des Ateliers Créatifs : Le Chat des artistes.

Le Chat des artistes est un ancien immeuble industriel, dédié à la création, situé au 2205 rue Parthenais dans le quartier Ste-Marie, au cœur d’un pôle créatif en émergence. Il a été acquis par les Ateliers Créatifs et converti en espaces offerts en location aux artistes, artisans et organismes culturels.

Ce projet a été baptisé de façon ironique, en hommage à la chanson de Jean-Pierre Ferland « Le chat du café des artistes ». Cette pièce relate l’histoire d’un artiste qui, en désespoir de cause, offre son corps en pâtée au chat. Le Chat des artistes se veut donc une version plus positive, un élan vers ce qui anime nos quartiers, captive nos regards et ébranle nos idées.

Plus concrètement, le Chat des artistes, c’est 30 000 pieds carrés d’espace de travail, 42 ateliers et aujourd’hui, plus d’une centaine d’artistes qui y travaillent chaque jour.  Le Chat des artistes est un lieu unique de synergie créative grâce à la diversité des pratiques, des expériences (artistes de la relève côtoyant des artistes ayant déjà une carrière bien entamée), des cultures et des générations qui s’y retrouvent. Les pratiques varient allant des arts visuels et médiatiques, à la joaillerie, le théâtre, l’éco-design, la chapellerie, la reliure, le cinéma, le rembourrage, l’illustration et aussi…. le travail du verre !

Ce lieu de création devient, pour plusieurs créateurs qui utilisent les lieux. une manière de sortir de l’isolement et de faire évoluer leurs pratiques respectives par les échanges, la complémentarité et la communication entre les gens. D’ailleurs, des espaces de rencontre comme le hall, le salon et la cuisine commune ont été aménagés afin de favoriser cette vie associative. Après seulement deux ans d’existence, cette communauté devient une véritable ruche qui bourdonne d’activités influençant  positivement l’environnement social et économique du quartier.

Ainsi, ce projet se veut également un outil de revitalisation de cet ancien quartier industriel défavorisé. Lorsque les artistes arrivent dans un secteur, ils l’embellissent, lui donnent une âme et le transforment. L’art est un outil de changement social. Les artistes redonnent vie à leurs espaces urbains et jouent le rôle de défricheurs, ils stimulent la vitalité d’un quartier. Souhaitons que le Chat des artistes soit une source d’espoir et un exemple de l’engagement d’une communauté à accorder aux créateurs une place où ils seront libres d’imaginer et de façonner beauté et émois.

_____________

The Artists’ Cat
The Ateliers Créatifs, a non-profit organization, have converted an old industrial building into studios offered for rent to artists, craft’s makers and cultural organisations. It has been named—in an ironic manner—in tribute to Jean-Pierre Ferland’s work “Le chat du café des artistes,” which tells the story of an artist who in an act of desperation offers his body as meat for a cat.

The opening presentation  at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts for the 2010 GAAC conference was given by the Maritime  artist Peter Powning, …he has lived and worked for the last 35 years in Markhamville, New Brunswick. So, what could better for a first ‘maritime’ article than an excerpt from his talk “Going Public”  unfortunately it will be minus most of the slides.

His opening talk was predominantly about Public commissions hence… “GOING PUBLIC” The following is a segment that I chose from the talk that I thought would be of interest to artists and GAAC members alike. “Lynne”

“I will show and discuss some of the public commissions I am involved with in the context of my mixed media practice. I’m particularly interested in the context of public art and the ways in which it engages the public. As well, I’m interested in the commissioning process and its effects on creative thinking.

I work principally in glass, clay and bronze. They all involve transformation by fire.

A good deal of the work I have been engaged in over the last few years deals with metaphor based on ideas concerning balance, fragmentation and transformation: of the body, heart, mind, spirit, nature, language & culture. The work is meant to have the feel of the artifact: an emotional artifact made solid, cultural artifacts for our times. I’ve also been making photographic images over the years and these have recently become an important element of my artistic production as well.

I’ve lived and worked for 35 years in Markhamville, New Brunswick in a high hill valley surrounded by boreal forest. My work and life are informed by a rural existence and my long connection with place. This may sound romantic, at times it feels that way, but mostly it just is the way things are, sometimes pleasant and easy but often enough challenging and difficult. What I’m attempting with my work is to produce objects that excite me and that connect with other people. It’s really as simple as that. I also like the thought of the work started here in my studio going out into the world.

Being an artist is a perilous and peculiar occupation that has many and varied rewards as well as many and varied insecurities and pitfalls. I live a ying yang existence with periods of secluded creation bamboozled by periodic public exposure when I venture beyond the hills of home to see if the work really works and hasn’t just become a delusory obsession.

Glass found it’s way into my work gradually during the 1980’s. I spent a winter in Providence RI where I had a studio next to Howard Ben Tre before he was well known. I helped him with some mold making and he has helped me over the years with my interest in glass.

I have always needed to address a market of some sort with most of what I produce. Public art is another market. Unlike most of what I’ve done, which has been sold to individuals, public art becomes part of the public commons. All artists enter a market place whether it’s a close circle of like-minded artists and academics, public museums, artist run spaces, or through galleries. Getting our work out there in some way is part of what being an artist is about. We communicate. We all need a “public”. With public art our “market” is determined by location and visibility and the ability of public art to connect, to create engagement. The transaction is supported by money one way or another but it’s not about money.

Why go big? Well first of all it’s a creative challenge, a technical and organizational challenge and I enjoy challenges. I also have to admit that it’s fun. I get to play. I think play is an essential ingredient in what we all do. Play is a serious element of creativity. Public art also allows me to move out of the gallery space and onto the street, park or public building site. The work has a public identity rather than a private one. It’s a less sheltered, more exposed place to be as an artist. The artist who makes public art becomes a public artist, and has to deal with the expectations, understanding of, and interpretation by what Annie Gerin in the book Public Art in Canada calls, “ … non-specialized publics outside the gallery space”       a polite way of saying your average bozo. I don’t say this meaning to denigrate your average bozo but to point out that we spend much of our professional lives sheltered from public opinions of the sort that come from people uninterested in art, even antagonistic to art in general, or who at least have had little conscious exposure to contemporary art

The public doesn’t get to choose what it is confronted with in terms of public art (or architecture or much else of the landscape, urban, town or country for that matter). In the case of art however, the question of value often comes up. An ugly light standard at least has the value of lighting something. A hideous condo building does house people however badly. The case for art is more difficult and not as readily apparent.

Citizens see the work whether they want to or not, and those offended by art in general, or the tax money spent on art or the content of the art can be bluntly expressive about what they think. It can be quite a jolt coming out of our comfortable circle of support to encounter opinions expressed in letters to the editor regarding our precious endeavors, especially as stated in the wild west of anonymous comments made in on-line blogs in reaction to media coverage of a public unveiling. That being said public dialogue is an important element attached to public art. It can take years for a public sculpture to settle into its environment and become a part of  “place”, a “local” rather than an intruder. Public art can form part of a community’s identity. I think it’s a hopeful pursuit, in the sense that with public art we are engaged in the notion that we can improve and evolve, that there can be positive change amidst all the negative and difficult complexities of life in the 21^st century. Making permanent, site specific objects one at a time, by hand says we think we’ll carry on, that it’s worth the effort.  It’s an act of direct unmediated public engagement.

Artistic and cultural value is a can of worms but in a sense value is predetermined by the very fact that public sculpture happens. Cultural forces have made a case for the inclusion of public art in construction budgets, and various levels of government, most notably municipal, have bought the argument. The idea of “creative cities” is in ascendency. Public art is perceived to have value as an indicator of enlightened policy and as an attractant to the sorts of people and activities that make a city a desirable place to live.

At least part of the value of public art is similar to the value of art and the individually made object in general. A public sculpture distinguishes its locale as being differentiated from the increasingly homogenized big box mass culture we swim in. It is site specific. Architecture and parks can help humanize where we live, public art goes further by not only making connections with people and place but by having something to say. It can become part of the connective cultural tissue of a specific place. Public art is a kind of cultural eruption or focal point. Even poorly conceived public art becomes a record of cultural decisions made, a reflection of the community from which it springs. Value accrues to public art over time.

In my case a public art commission starts with the personal and builds from my reaction to the site and proposal guidelines. It will have visual references as clues to meaning, it will involve the careful use of materials in ways meant to evoke response, it will be in a context that gives further meaning and it will gather associations as the process goes along. It might attempt to be bold, beautiful, serene, humorous, provocative or all of these things together: serenely, provocative perhaps. My work is intended to engage not instruct.

I respond to a site. By necessity I respond to the thematic requirements of the request for proposals and try to make those considerations work for me. Underlying the impulse to engage in public art making is the same basic creative urge that makes object-making an imperative in my life. It is a need to engage the world and understand the world through the production of objects inspired by creative observation. Seeing what is there to be seen, internalizing it, then physically manifesting a response. The process is a visual, tactile interpretation of experience that comes from that zone beyond word-thought, that deep well that word analysis can only skim the surface of. That holy place of creative imagining that analysis flattens. This is true whether the source of inspiration is an ancient artifact, a beautiful cup or a rock formation. I try to trust my instincts.

I often have to overcome an initial irritation with the thematic expectations set out in the request for proposals for public art competitions. It’s rare to be given a free hand. The sculpture has to satisfy a jury that it meets requirements. This can mean dealing with very specific historical facts, or something about the purpose of the building it is associated with, or a grab bag of art jargon fluff.

Public Sculpture can have many limitations and restrictions. It has to be virtually vandal proof, weather proof, building code compatible, engineered, liability proof, not invite invasion by or habitation by birds, beasts or the homeless, be skate board proof, cleanable if tagged with paint, and still be culturally viable, at least to the satisfaction of a jury of unknown composition.

In canvassing several artist friends who have at one point or another been involved in percentage for the arts programs it is clear that none of them find the process satisfactory. In fact as soon as an artist can ditch the process and find commissions that forgo the lottery aspects of trying to get sculpture commissions through percentage for the arts programs they move on. This is a problem. It leaves the field open to the less accomplished, the desperate, or the amateur with credentials, or artists who have a big enough practice that they have the cash flow to hire people to work on proposals allowing them not to be too distracted from their creative work by the time sink of making endless proposals. The only solution I can see to this is for municipalities that commission public art to have the courage to have some of the larger commissions done on the basis of a pre-determined short list rather then the easy out of calls for Expressions of Interest or Requests for Proposals. That would mean that mixed juries would at least be supporting active professionals without being distracted by large numbers of essentially poorly or unqualified applicants.

I’ve been researching the winning proposals for some of the percentage for the arts commissions lately and there are quite a few absolutely inexplicable choices being made. In following up on how the winners were selected made it is clear that the juries were dominated by people without arts backgrounds and I have to say it shows. So more varied approaches to commissioning public art are essential to continue to engage the most accomplished artists to participate in the process. There is a need for jury education through workshops and broad exposure to some of the great public art in the world. I hate to see large amounts of money being squandered on mediocre “safe” art. I have to admit though that the process doesn’t encourage me to risk making the bolder, wilder proposals that I might if I felt confident about the jury mix. The chance to work on large public commissions still drives me to engage in the process though with considerable more selectivity than in the past.

PAR LAURA SASSEVILLE

Partie 1 de 4

Le 29 mai 2010, Montréal, VERRE COUTURE, le défilé et la fête de clôture du congrès du GAAC : un franc succès. Tous étaient ravis de ce qu’ils ont vu sur le cat walk.  Nous sommes heureux que l’idée de Laura Donefer se soit concrétisée à la hauteur de ses attentes. Wow !!!! Quel show !!!

Quelques semaines plus tard, je reçois un courriel me demandant, si je voulais, écrire un article sur le défiler.

Pour être honnête, l’écriture de cet article sur le défilé, vu de l’intérieur, me semblait moins palpitante.

Par contre, en revisitant mon expérience à la participation et à l’aide à l’organisation de l’évènement,  le métissage de 2 mondes : fluidité et libre mouvement du vêtement opposé au verre fragile et fixe. Je me suis questionné sur l’avenir du verre : est-ce le cadre défini par les conseils des métiers d’art, les centres de formation et les Universités Canadiens est à l’aube d’être redéfini?

Depuis l’introduction du verre en Amérique, le verre à une orientation étroitement lié avec l’objet utilitaire, l’œuvre d’art et l’intégration à l’architecture. Pourtant, le verre m’apparaît en pleine expansion au-delà du simple objet ou sculpture avec une identité locale.

Nos dernières décennies sont teintées par la mondialisation, l’immigration, les échanges culturels et l’utilisation de nouvelle technologie. Ils ont influencé le marché mondial par l’accessibilité du même bien de consommation partout dans le monde. Par exemple, IKEA et le cybermarché (ESTY, EBAY…), pour en nommer quelques un. Ainsi qu’un malaisien peut avoir la même lampe IKEA numéro style Alang qu’un québécois.

Maintenant, notre consommation et la fabrication de nos biens ne sont plus exclusivement locales. Le design n’est plus défini que par nos grands espaces verts.

Certains s’exclameront que nous perdons notre identité; à mes yeux, ceci enrichit nos sociétés culturellement par cette ouverture vers le monde. Par contre, l’important c’est de s’approprier de ces avantages et de travailler à garder la production locale.

De façon analogue, nous ne cuisinons plus que les ragoûts de pattes de cochons ou le rôti de bœuf le dimanche. Les produits qui paraissaient exotiques à grand-maman sont un incontournable sur notre liste d’épicerie. Même les instruments et plats de cuisson, comme le tagine, les baguettes et le wok font parti de notre quotidien autant que le plat en fonte.

Alors, je me demande:

Si la création est le reflet de nos sociétés, alors chaque artiste et designer expriment avec leur vision, un fragment de cette nouvelle réalité?

C’est peut-être pourquoi nous constatons de plus en plus le métissage des genres et ça dans toutes les sphères de création : musique, mode, design, architecture et métiers d’art.

Vous vous dites peut-être que le métissage à toujours exister, à mon humble avis, jamais autant constater aujourd’hui, clairement nous sommes dans la poste modernité à la puissance 10.

À mon tour, je vous pause la question : Les nouvelles générations de créateurs qui ont grandi avec une plus grande ouverture et accessibilité sur le monde, démontrent-t-ils plus de faciliter à construire un vocabulaire visuel qui mélange design, styles, cultures, matériaux et technologies? Dans la prochaine année, à l’aide d’article, d’interview et de rencontre, j’essayerai de répondre à la question…à suivre….

BY LAURA SASSEVILLE

Part 1 of 4

On May 29, 2010, in Montreal the VERRE COUTURE’s Glass Fashion Show and the closing party of the Glass Art Association of Canada (GAAC) was a great success! Everyone was amazed by what they saw on the cat walk.

We were happy that Laura Donefer’s idea became a reality. Wow!!! What a show!!!

A few weeks after the show, I got an email asking me if I wanted to write an article on the subject of the Glass Fashion Show.  To be honest, viewed from the inside, writing an article on the VERRE COUTURE sounded to me to be less thrilling.  However, after revisiting my experience of participating and helping organize the event, I asked myself a lot of questions regarding the mix between the two worlds which are the flow and the free movement of clothing opposed to the fragility and stiffness of glass. I questioned myself about the future of glass; is the framework defined by the Conseil des métiers d’art of Québec and the Canadian universities on the verge of being redefined?

Since the introduction of glass to North America, the limited orientation of glass has been related to glassware, art work and the integration of glass art work into architecture. Nevertheless, glass objects and sculptures appear to me to be in full expansion with a local identity.

Our last few decades have been tainted by globalization, immigration, cultural exchange and use of new technologies. These influence the overall market by making the same consumer goods available world wide. For example, you have IKEA and cyber shopping (ESTY, EBAY, just to name a few). A Malaysian can buy an IKEA lamp with the same model number and style as a person from Quebec.

Today our consumer goods are no longer exclusively manufactured locally. Designs are no longer defined by our great outdoors. Some will claim that we are losing our identity.  However, for my part, I believe this will enrich our society culturally by opening our minds to the world. Nonetheless, it’s important to capture the advantages of the new world but to keep the production local.

Traditionally, we no longer cook pig’s feet stew or roast beef on Sundays. The products that once seemed exotic to grandma are now a must in our groceries list.  Even the hardware in our kitchens, such as tagine, chop sticks and woks, have all become as much a part of our mundane cooking as the old frying pan.

So, I’m asking myself, “If creation is the reflection of our society, then can every artiste and designer express themselves with their vision, a fragment of a new reality?”  This is perhaps the reason we are observing more and more intermingling between different types, styles and every sphere of creation: music, fashion, design, architecture, fine arts and arts and crafts. You may say that this intermingling has always existed but, in my humble opinion, today we see it a lot more.  We are in the post modern era to the 10th power.

It’s my turn to ask you a question.  Do the new generation of designers and artistes who have grown up with greater openness and accessibility to the world demonstrate a greater ease in building a visual vocabulary that mixes design styles, cultures, materials and technologies?  In the next year, through articles, interviews and reports, I will try to answer that question.  To be continued!

By Ben Goodman

I think I’ve received a critique of one of my recent sculpture installations. I had selected a large, undulating grassy area for this 3-piece sculpture and was busily setting the work in place. Some movement behind caught my attention. When I turned to look, I was staring into the eyes of several sheep just six feet away, busily munching and observing an “artist at work!” This is one of the joys of engaging with the landscape as canvas. The unexpected – be it weather, variations in the land, or animals as critics! Several months after this installation and the sculpture is still in place. The sheep must be satisfied with my work or, at least do not consider it an intrusion.  This may stack up as one of my more favourable critiques.

Most sculptors yearn for a large space in which to place their work, and to be able to minimize the amount of visual “noise” surrounding it. “Don’t Fence Me In”, the title of a song from the 1930’s, is the lament often heard from sculptors. Interior space, whether in galleries or private homes, is often at a premium for placing sculpture. Three-dimensional work needs room to breathe. Outdoor installations meet this need admirably. Using the landscape as a “canvas” for sculpture installations provides a unique creative opportunity for artists by removing the confines of interior space and opening up a refreshing new freedom of expression, both in creative style and scale. Land sites provide diversity of setting – flat or undulating, open or forested, waterfront or hilltop and often with views of distant hills and the ocean. This landscape setting adds measurably to the enjoyment of the work by the viewer.

Several artists on Saltspring Island have commented on their own recent experience with outdoor art installations:

Margaret Day, gallery owner

“Since gardens and design play such an important part in so many peoples’ lives,  outdoor sculpture is an area of art collection that ought to be more fully explored. In the strongest pieces the artists react to the environment. Nature itself  becomes a component. The result is a three-way dialogue among artist, nature, and the viewer.”

Morley Myers, sculptor

“Sculpture takes on a new context when placed in an outdoor setting. It acquires an unexpected strength and can be very harmonious with nature. For the viewer, outdoor installations provide the opportunity to experience art without the perceived pretensions often experienced in a traditional gallery setting. So both the artist and the viewer gain an enhanced quality of experience.”

Ron Crawford, sculptor and painter

“For the artist, this experience (outdoor installations) connects us to a place, time, season – even a particular tree. A walk through a sculpture garden becomes an opportunity for surprise and contemplation”.

There are well over one hundred sculptures installed out-of-doors on Saltspring Island including the forty sculptures installed at Hastings House Country House Hotel in 2009, sites at other publicly accessible venues and sculpture placed in private gardens. While premature to call this recent interest in outdoor sculpture installations a movement or trend, there is clear evidence of a possible future direction. A refrain from the lyrics of Don’t Fence Me In – “Oh give me land, lots of land….”  has been heard and responded to – at least in part!

Ben Goodman lives on Saltspring Island. He is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art, past president of the Glass Art Association of Canada and past editor of the Glass Gazette (now the Contemporary Canadian Glass journal). His views on “landscape as canvas” have been influenced by his equestrian travels around the world. His work can be seen at www.bengoodman.ca

Watcher #7, found wood, bent/fused glass, 16"H x 13" x 12", Ben Goodman, 2007

By Ben Goodman

Whenever I read one of Kevin Lockau’s articles, I am quickly engaged. He asks important questions and presents stimulating views that deserve consideration. In his article in the Winter ’08 journal, he talks about two issues – the need for artists to be aware of the environmental impact of their work and, secondly, how we achieve societal acceptance of our art and of us as artists.

Glassmaking is not a “green” process – not necessarily any worse than many other media, but not any better. Both the manufacture of the raw material (cullet, raw batch, colour bar) and the conversion of this material in hot glass studios to create the work, are both energy intensive processes that can have an undesirable environmental impact. The technology exists to reduce this impact but it does complicate the operation of most small studios. I refer to the potential to use window glass or bottle glass scrap – modified, as a raw material. This “scrap” is usually destined for landfill and is usually available locally saving a lot of transportation costs. I know of one studio that does melt window glass scrap with some success. The larger issue by far though, is the degree to which the desirable societal benefits that result from our art might mitigate any negative environmental impact, and how to attain this societal acceptance of our work.

As you walk through any urban landscape you are confronted with stuff; mall after mall, store after store, gallery after gallery – thousands and thousands of objects. Every imaginable material, colour, size, design, use, non-use! The inescapable conclusion is that the world is over indulged with stuff. The product of our work as artists/crafters can add to this stuff. As artists, making objects provides part or our entire livelihood. It also satisfies our need for self expression. In order to satisfy these needs, we risk adding to an already over-cluttered and indulged world. Can we reconcile our desire for self-expression so that we can make a living and still have a net benefit to society?

The way to deal with this question is to ensure that everything you produce has merit. And I don’t mean in just a casual sense. It has to have real merit. While it doesn’t entirely resolve the question of “overindulgence and clutter”, it does apply a test that should weed out the irrelevant. In the case of functional work, the merit must be a combination of usefulness and pleasure that can give the work honour in its final placement. In the case of non-functional work, the merit has to be in the meaning. It has to represent an important statement, or feeling of the creator. So, honour and meaning – both very positive attributes. As artists, we must each be our own most severe critics. We must edit our work to a very high standard, a standard we establish before we start to work.

A short anecdote from my student days at the Ontario College of Art illustrates this principle dramatically. As part of our final year critique, we were asked to set up a selection of our best work in a gallery setting. The head of the glass department, Karl Schantz, would join us and conduct the crit. We were all pumped up for this important event – a little nervous of course and quite proud of our work from the session just ending. After all, what we had set up, we thought, was the cream of all of our hard work over the last few months.

Karl entered the gallery dragging a garbage can and a large steel pipe. We were a bit apprehensive as these were not the usual props he brought with him to these crits. He then advised that we were to pick out what we considered the two best pieces of work from the collection we had set up. The rest we were to smash into the garbage can! We were all devastated at this enforced “edit” of what we had already thought was the best of our work. Some were close to tears. The point he demonstrated, successfully, was that it is a mistake to allow one’s work to become so precious that you lose sight of the quality and meaning that you had set out to achieve at the outset. This incident occurred over twenty years ago and I have never forgotten this important lesson. Perhaps we could all benefit by having a garbage can and a steel pipe sitting in the corner of our studio – a constant reminder to always strive for quality in our work.

I read a passage in a book some time ago that eloquently states the characteristics of hand crafted objects that can assure them a unique place in society: “the quality of the final piece should embody forever within itself some echo of the maker’s voice, some tremor of their hand, some molecule of their breath”.* Perhaps embodying these qualities ensures the merit and meaning that can give our work a positive place in society.

*From Measure of Love, Christopher Wilkins

Ben Goodman lives and works on Saltspring Island on the West Coast of BC. He is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art – 1990, past President of GAAC (1994-2002) and past editor of the Glass Gazette (1994-2004). These days, Ben indulges in more intellectual, mental art than physical art – another way to avoid adding to the world’s clutter. Perhaps this is a natural “production adjustment” phase that all artists go through over their creative life span. Visit: www.bengoodman.ca

Venus Unleashes Her Vulcan Dogs. Kevin Lockau. Cast glass, cast aluminum, wood, pigments. 99x69x36 cm. Photo by studio105photography.com

By Kevin Lockau

I never could get through Cervantes’ allegorical classic. I have tried several times without creasing the spine. But I do have my sympathies or shared illusions with Don Quixote. Unlike Quixote, I am ‘deliberately’ trying to reinvent myself – twenty some years of working with cast glass, twenty of learning from students, twenty of making sculpture that asks questions about our culture. The only thing that I know for damn sure is that I know nothing with certainty. I couldn’t justify charging a windmill, and yet, here I am, tilting a bit.

Prior to this autumn, the Canadian conscious hit the ground running with the issue of global warming. We were over denial and taking it personally. It seemed like a bedrock shift had taken place. How we live, work, travel and consume was called into question and a carbon-footprint tag was annotated to just about everything.

When this current financial ‘crisis’ hit, fewer references to the environment held even a CBC audience, but at the time, and hopefully again soon, the public was talking green.

Christy Haldane, curator and glass artist, was actively walking the walk. It was her e-mail call for entry for a sculpture show challenging artists to use one of the ‘last six’ (or was it six hundred and sixty-six) materials that are destined to be land filled and not processed in even ambitious recycling programs that caught my attention. My private response was to critically look at the materials I use in my own sculptural work – especially glass. I began to feel more than a bit morally hypocritical.

Does the world need to burn fossil fuels to make decorative glass? The cullet to make that glass transported from where? China, for some. Coloured with German glass rods and powders, you cagily ventilate skyward because you know it’s foolish to breathe in the studio yet are OK to piss in the ocean of atmosphere? While environmental impact is applied to everything we do, it is more than symbolic when it is applied to your livelihood. It is more hypocritical when the objects we make of glass serve to reference the land and have some dialogue with issues of the environment. Yes, every activity has an impact, every material has its impact, but does the world need your creative skills and talents applied to this material?

While these questions are contemporary, they are not originally mine. My consciousness was awakened by (then) Sheridan students such as Sally McCubbin and the following year by Marcia Christie. As an instructor, I at first found the mire of environmental questioning very frustrating, and assumed bull-headedly and naively that it was symptomatic of creative stagnation – a virus that over-summered in the third year room. I never imagined that I myself would be infected when I took it home to work on sculpture full time. I don’t know if Stefan Dion ever visited the glass studio at Sheridan, but during the last federal election…for him a mutation of that virus proved fatal.

My ongoing series of sculptures inspired by Canadian landscape metamorphosed to become representative of my changing attitude and acceptance of the cultural greening and my own responsibility as a citizen. I believe one of the roles of any artist is to make visual the mythologies of our times; I wrestled with my sculpture to flesh this changing attitude, and especially to make it personal – if only for myself.

If art, and I include all arts, can create a discourse about who we are or, more importantly, of whom we aspire to be, it is of value to the greater society. Arts and culture in the broadest sense are important. Wasn’t this why we crowed indignant over Harper’s remarks about elitist chi-chi vernisages at the taxpayer’s expense? He was voicing the opinion that ‘Joe Plumber,’ or in my neighbourhood ‘Bob the Bushworker,’ and ultimately our Head of State, thinks that what we do is irrelevant. In many ways, he was right.

Joe Blow wouldn’t give a cold punty to the environment if he feels the big hand on his paycheck. That Joe Plumber thinks that renewable energy is fantastic as long as the wind turbines are out of sight of home and hunt-camp. That Bob the Bushworker is alienated, somewhat hostile and definitely suspicious of artists…’whatever it is that they do.’ And we have ourselves to blame.

The political morticians said that the Liberals (and, by default, the Greens) didn’t sell the green shift properly to Canadians. We, as creative people, as makers, artists, designers, craftspeople (it’s a big camp), don’t sell ourselves well to the broad public either. And if we don’t care about this – then we are elitists.

Most of the public taste is eighty years behind the times in painting and sculpture. If you think that as a maker of production glass that this doesn’t apply to you, then think again. As creative people, we all share the possibility and responsibility of what we make. Does the culture we live in value the ‘made by hand’? Does it appreciate or understand the design process behind the work, the materials used, or care about your concept? Whose voice speaks for the importance of what we do? Whose voice speaks for you? Is the voice local and organic (yours), or sold packaged and government approved (a council), or is it the iconic and global Chihully’s that even Bob the Bushworker has seen on TV? Whose face do your neighbours think of when they imagine an artist?

By accepting the full mantle of this creative life, we share in its potential. This challenge is not to be taken only for your ego, but to share your skills to strengthen the community in which you live. Your creative and problem solving skills could be invaluable not only to issues beyond the arts specialty but to your wider interests and concerns.

Our art and culture can define us as a nation and tilt our perceptions of beauty, of value or of being a citizen. That is work worth making. Perhaps that is worth a centimeter of melted permafrost.

Kevin Lockau is a sculptor in cast glass and granite. As well, he is resolving ideas using waste carpet and also waste milled wood. Volunteering free time, labour and skills has helped him find a sense of community in the Hastings Highlands in Ontario where he lives.

Cardiac, Kevin Lockau, 2008

By Kevin Lockau

It must have been July the fourth. I was a TA at Pilchuck and it was final critique day for the casting class under instructor Henner Schroder. I have a vivid recollection of one student’s work on the table. I can’t remember what the casting looked like, but I do remember the colours of red and white and blue and stars and stripes in the sculpture. I can’t say for certain, nineteen years on – or if my memory is embellishing – but to defend the work, the student started to sing “God Bless America.”

You’re serious, I asked incredulously.

He looked at me like I was from another planet, and maybe I was, because the impression that still haunts me was this. No Canadian would ever make a piece like that. No red and white, maple leaves, and definitely no ‘O, Canada,’ and defend it with brash patriotism.

Just no way.

So what defines Canadian glass? Art glass, production glass, design, flat glass, architectural glass, and … beads, all could be examined. What defines Canadian or Canadian anything? Now Br’er Rabbit, there’s a big ball of tar for you. Your instinct tells you not to go there. At the most primitive, the conversation becomes how we are not Americans – and with a hopeful messianic figure as their new Commander in Chief, we want to keep things, well…polite.

I shouldn’t actually be writing on this topic without first consulting glass artists with a much more experienced opinion. Immediately artists such as Katherine Gray, Tolly Jones, Laura Donefer, Koen Vanderstukken, Kris and Eva at Tsunami, come to mind for a knowledgeable perspective. And if I thought for a further two seconds, my voice would be near the very bottom of any list. How Canadian of me. My intent, as this magazine goes on-line, and in the spirit of its’ humble beginnings under (then editor) Ben Goodman – where this was a comfortable place to give a good rant among friends – is to not phone these excellent sources to paraphrase their input, but the conversation that ensues should be public and inclusive. I hope to get the big ball of tar going, and get out of the way. I think it is an important topic to at least question, and it doesn’t get rolled around much in our circles, perhaps because of our own self-interest.

Does this identity of ‘Canadian’ even matter? (It’s ok, WD-40 takeoff both tar and pine sap.) I assume one of the mandates of this magazine is to represent Canadian glass internationally. One expects the label does make a difference from a marketing perspective, especially when the dollar was comparatively lower in value. But I return to the tar-ball question – is our glasswork, the best of what we create, unique in the world of glass?

My response, in a word, is NO.

Love it or rebel against it. As a nation, most of our non-elite culture streams unfettered across our southern international border. We don’t have time to even hit the mute button. Most of our population is stuck near the chalk line snapped on the continent by the Oregon Treaty like settled flakes in a snow globe. It’s too bad we don’t have more close and powerful neighbours. It could balance things out. Being squeezed between a rock and several hard places makes home look pretty green. But the intangible vastness of the Atlantic to the east and the Pacific to the west makes both old Europe and the Orient seem like distant friends. And heck, the North is all ours to mythologize. It’s the only direction left that we can go to step back and away. Our national identity isn’t an island one, a culture fortress with a moat like that of Australia or Cape Breton. Our identity isn’t even singular, it’s multiregional. The differences of identity between regions of distance, language, oil and history might only be surpassed by the urban-rural divide. We have many voices, many stories; increasingly ours is a global identity. Three cheers for multicultural Canada.

However, being increasingly multicultural isn’t particularly unique in the world. Applied to a technical level of glassmaking, the Italian, Venetian method of glass blowing circled the world like Columbus. Czech Republic kiln casting techniques, Swedish sandcasting, Australian fusing, all came to the new world, blowing from the west like an Alberta clipper. Technique has a multinational label. While it is inappropriate to give the expertise of a glass technique solely a national identity, like any good immigrant culture, we took it in and accepted it as gospel.

It is in Canada’s good fortune to be geographically close to the Pilchuck School, the epicentre of multinational technique on this continent and perhaps the world, which makes it easier for Canadians to attend. While our regional glass schools have their historic strengths arising from their particular institutional programs and from the individual passions of their faculty, Pilchuck (add Penland and Haystack to a lesser degree) enhanced the learning curve. The experience of attending a Pilchuck course also opened the door filled – with blinding light to what the rest of the world was doing in your field – not just from luminary instructors, but also from talented students abroad.

In a United Nations of culture and creativity, you quickly find others that share your passion and your mythologies; stories that you thought were the bedrock of being Canadian. The Landscape that shapes you, an identity that struggles to catch its breath against a monolith, a painful relearning of lost memories, a quiet sense of poetic solitude are also told in the works of other glass artists in other places around the world. Borders do not limit great themes and good work. Play the game of ‘find the Canadian’ in a survey of international glass. If you don’t know the artist, you may be surprised.

Twenty years ago, it was said, perhaps not so facetiously, that if the glass sculpture had stones or bones in it…it must be Canadian. I’ve even used damn beaver chewed sticks in glass sculpture, and today my work is still inspired by shield landscape. Artists around the globe are equally inspired, and sometimes use stone or bone. As Canada becomes more and more urban, more culturally diverse, Northrop Frey’s Idea of the North becomes more and more… an idea. With Internet communications, travel, immigration and green cards, where you are from is less of a question than where are you now.

So what’s left? My hands are as tarred as an oil sands retaining pond. Where does that leave our patriotic romanticism? Is there nothing uniquely ours to define or differentiate what we make as ‘Canadian’? There is a part of our Canadian mythos that may be of help. The Lester Pearson legacy distinguishes Canadians with the reputation of being diplomatic, peace brokers and having the ability of finding compromise and common ground on the world stage. I did use the word ‘mythos’ intentionally, for where it may be suffering politically it may be a virtue for its citizens to maintain. The beauty of having so many creative voices, so many stories, so many technical skills to draw from is that the benefits of working collaboratively are wealthier. Setting aside a part of your creative time and artistic ego to join skills and trade vision with another has, for me, always given more rewards in return than I could have foreseen. Intentionally and indirectly, all the most satisfying projects that I have been part of in my career were done with varying degrees of collaboration. Dangerous Art was an ambitious OCA (Ontario College of Art) collective.  The Glass Architecture Project with Alfred Engerer at the helm put me to work with architect Paul Syme of Toronto (and there can be no better challenge of how you see your material than to work with a non-glass creative person).

Brad Copping and I did an exhibition where we traded components in their early stages for the other to take in their own direction.  I have worked with furniture-maker and canoe-tripper Andrew Reesor on sculpture components and taken much needed design criticism. I continue to work with master blacksmith Duerst, trading components back and forth for reworking till we are both satisfied. Anyone who has a spouse who is an artist is fully aware of the important input that the working relationship can give to each other’s personal artwork. One should also recognize as well the grey area of collaboration, from design to completion, of employee input. I am reminded of William Morris’s blunt words as he entered the Harbourfront Glass Studio for the first time to give a demo, “You guys are crazy if you blow alone.” Times have changed. The potential here is for more than a shared studio, equipment and expenses, an extra set of hands to help punty-up.  A true collaboration creates greater than the sum of the parts.

Targeted thematic group exhibitions should not be confused with collaboration. As a rule, participating artists are picked from a line-up like a neighbourhood game of pond shinny, but no one actually gets to play “as a team.” No strategy, no practice, no passing, no scoring, just show up for the game with your stick. It’s all puck hogs. We are too comfortable in the mold and market that we create around our personal work and defensive of our artistic persona. To be represented outside of these constructed confines of identity assumes risk and a loss of immediate control. Private galleries that market your work are also most comfortable where the authorship of creation is well-defined and hierarchical and fits recognizably into the artist’s Body of Work. While a collective may have a faster divorce rate than collaborating couples, they are cauldrons of creativity and critique (and sometimes politics), which influence is far lasting in effect. Collaboration has no rules. It is a process of evolution that is different for each participant, each project. It can dump you unceremoniously with a negotiated settlement into a foreign but more vastly stimulating landscape.

Could the nation that cradled the Six Nations, the Group of Seven, Painters Eleven, General Idea, Fastwurms and coalition governments be a leader in collaborative creativity? Could an identity that boasts these skills foster creative momentum that weaves regional voices within Canada? Abroad? Could our voices speak from a shared passion not merely wrapped in a red and white flag of marketing? Could the Glass Art Association of Canada be the architecture for the complex logistics? Perhaps it is in our national psyche to make the possibility of collaboration a virtue and, in time, be internationally recognized for a collective process of making and publically shared authorship beyond the excellence of the glasswork itself.

Forest Glass, Katherine Gray, found glass, acrylic shelves, steel. Heights range from 8'2" to 9'6", 2009

By Katherine Gray

As I write, it’s been pretty much 14 years since I decamped for the United States, thinking at the time that it was going to be for 3 months. I bring that up because I do feel slightly disconnected from the Canadian glass scene, despite staying somewhat abreast of current goings-on from regularly seeing familiar faces at GAS conferences, SOFA, summer craft camps, etc. But it occurred to me that I know precious few of the newer, younger generation of artists who would have arrived on the scene since I left, and that troubles me. Do I have to be in Canada to be aware of this talent?

Katherine Gray, Acqua Alta, 2008

I’ve been very fortunate in my career to be able to travel to Australia, Japan, and Europe and all over America. I hate to say it and I know people are going to hate me for this, but one thing that seems to distinguish Canadian glass is the low profile it keeps! Australia, for instance, invites a reasonable comparison: a country of similar geographic size and population, physically more isolated from other countries than say, Canada, yet in that country, there is a world renowned glass scene. Admittedly, a lot of the work is based on working with Bullseye glass in all its permutations, and consequently secures the support of the Bullseye Glass Corporation for promotion and exhibitions. My impression is that Klaus Moje was the progenitor of this phenomenon. I’d even go so far as to say that he is the Dale Chihuly of Australia, a charismatic and ambitious artist who by sheer force of will was able to develop an entire collector class, support network and glass education powerhouse at the ANU. Does the difference between Australia (and America) and Canada boil down to the presence or lack thereof of a larger-than-life glass dynamo?

That could be an easy answer, which doesn’t paint the full picture, but it does speak to an anomalous insularity that I remember experiencing when I was living in Canada. I distinctly recall instances of snide condescension and/or blatant disregard for what our peers were doing across the border. I know Canadians are sensitive to always living in the shadow of the cultural behemoth to the South. I can empathize with this sensitivity, even as I have evidently embraced living here. As for my American friends, it’s not that they don’t understand that feeling, they just don’t comprehend it all. I can’t help but wonder if this long shadow wears on Canadians, whether artist or not, somehow discouraging tall poppies from emerging.

Please keep in mind that I am speaking in generalities, as I know there are plenty of artists out there thinking big, showing internationally, winning awards, and making a fine living and career from working with glass. But if Kevin Lockau is wringing his hands to define Canadian glass and can’t do it, I don’t know who can!

Katherine Gray, Forest Glass (detail), 2009

There would have been a time when I would have characterized Canadian glass as a mixed media state of affairs, the glass components typically not exhibiting much in the way of skill or polish and always used in conjunction with, yes, stones, bones, rusty detritus, and one of my all-time faves, beaver chewed sticks. Thankfully, times have changed, and perhaps it is an indication of our hyper-interconnected world, as Kevin suggests, that no cohesive or overarching vision has emerged in the wake of rough-hewn artisanship.

Perhaps this could be attributed to what I would say is a fundamental shortcoming in the glass education arena in Canada in that there are no MFA programs, which is of course at odds with the fact that one needs an MFA to teach. If you had asked me about that ten years ago, I would have thought that situation awkward, but not so detrimental. I wouldn’t say the same today. In the intervening years, the options for pursuing a Master’s degree elsewhere, particularly in the States, have dwindled, become outrageously unaffordable or increasingly competitive. The deleterious side effect is an ongoing lack of a sustained intellectual rigor; the constant quest and questioning that is so often spawned from some of the better grad programs is on the whole missing in Canada. Again, there are those exceptional voices that don’t need a degree to be insightful and influential artists, but they should not exist alone in the wilderness. I am still chagrined to see how slow and resistant Canadians seem to be when it comes to embracing technique to the point where there is a level of mastery, and then making something of their own with it. Certainly there are some accomplished craftspeople, but there are a lot of wannabes and knock-off artists thrown in for good measure. Not that this is particular to Canada - in fact, I find it endemic within the glass community as a whole - but their presence anywhere poisons the well of honest self- expression, and Canada offers a comparatively small well.

Katherine Gray, Tabletopiaries, 2008

At this point, I feel I am grasping – trying to locate some seed of innate ‘Canadian-ness’ that permeates the current, and recent past, glass scene, and for better or worse, it is a struggle to try and come up with an answer. A continuing affinity for the natural landscape? More technically-adept renditions of stones and bones? Something that could (or could not?) be confused with American work? Ten, twenty or thirty years ago, it would have been easier to define Canadian glass, French glass, Japanese glass, etc. It is a polyglot world we inhabit now, where cultural distinctions of any kind are giving way to the worldwide trend of homogeneity. Perhaps this should sound an alarm that we need to maintain our national artistic identities, but there has to be a balance as, ideally, we all want to make art that is appreciated on a world stage, don’t we?

Katherine Gray received her AOCA from the Ontario College of Art and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Since then she has been the recipient of several residencies and fellowships. Her work has been exhibited throughout the USA and internationally in group and solo exhibitions. It is in the collections of the Corning Museum and the Museum of American Glass. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, where she is also a faculty member at California State University San Bernardino.

katherine-gray.com